The same thing is happening, to a greater or lesser extent, at all the factories and works.Everywhere, notwithstanding the diminution of the hours of labor and the increase of wages, the health of the operatives is worse than that of country workers, the average duration of life is shorter, and morality is sacrificed, as cannot but occur when people are torn from those conditions which most conduce to morality-family life, and free, healthy, varied and intelligible agricultural work.
It is very possibly true that, as some economists assert, with shorter hours of labor, more pay, and improved sanitary conditions in mills and factories, the health of the workers and their morality improve in comparison with the former condition of factory workers.It is possible also that latterly, and in some places, the position of the factory hands is better in external conditions than the position of the country population.But this is so (and only in some places) because the government and society, influenced by the affirmation of science, do all that is possible to improve the position of the factory population at the expense of the country population.
If the condition of the factory-workers in some places is (though only in externals) better than that of country people, it only shows that one can, by all kinds of restrictions, render life miserable in what should be the best external conditions, and that there is no position so unnatural and bad that men may not adapt themselves to it if they remain in it for some generations.
The misery of the position of a factory hand, and in general of a town-worker, does not consist in his long hours and small pay, but in the fact that he is deprived of the natural conditions of life in touch with nature, is deprived of freedom, is compelled to compulsory and monotonous toil at another man's will.
And, therefore, the reply to the questions, why factory and town workers are in a miserable condition, and how to improve their condition, cannot be that this arises because capitalists have possessed themselves of the means of production, and that the workers' condition will be improved by diminishing their hours of work, increasing their wages, and communalising the means of production.
The reply to these questions must consist in indicating the causes which have deprived the workers of the natural conditions of life in touch with nature, and have driven them into factory bondage, and in indicating means to free the workers from the necessity of foregoing a free, country life, and going into slavery at the factories.
And, therefore, the question why town-workers are in a miserable condition includes, first of all, the question, What reasons have driven them from the villages, where they and their ancestors have lived and might live, where, in Russia, people such as they do now live? and, What it is that drove and continues to drive them against their will to the factories and works?
If there are workmen, as in England, Belgium, or Germany, who for some generations have lived by factory work, even they live so not at their own free will, but because their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers were, in some way, compelled to exchange the agricultural life which they loved for life which seemed to them hard, in towns and in factories.First, the country people were deprived of their land by violence, says Karl Marx, were evicted and brought to vagabondage, and then, by cruel laws, they were tortured with pincers, with red-hot irons, and were whipped, to make them submit to the condition of being hired laborers.
ITherefore, the question how to free the workers from their miserable position should, one would think, naturally lead to the question how to remove those causes which have already driven some, and are now driving or threatening to drive, the rest of the peasants from the position which they considered and consider good, and have driven and are driving them to a position which they consider bad.
Economic science, although it indicates in passing the causes that drove the peasants from the villages, does not concern itself with the question how to remove these causes, but directs all its attention to the improvement of the worker's position in the existing factories and works, assuming, as it were, that the worker's position at these factories and workshops is something unalterable, some-thing which must at all costs be maintained for those who are already in the factories, and must absorb those who have not yet left the villages or abandoned agricultural work.
Moreover, economic science is so sure that all the peasants have inevitably to become factory operatives in towns, that though all the sages and all the poets of the world have always placed the ideal of human happiness in the conditions of agricultural work; though all the workers whose habits are unperverted have always preferred, and still prefer, agricultural labor to any other;though factory work is always unhealthy and monotonous, while agriculture is the most healthy and varied;though agricultural work is free - that is, the peasant alternates toil and rest at his own will-while factory work, even if the factory belongs to the workmen, is always enforced, in dependence on the machines;though factory work is derivative, while agricultural work is fundamental, and without it no factory could exist-yet economic science affirms that all the country people not only are not injured by the transition from the country to the town, but themselves desire it and strive towards it.The Slavery of Our Times -- Ch 5 -- Leo TolstoyFrom The Slavery of Our Times by Leo Tolstoy
